[Via Bad Astronomy] Phil Plait put up a post this morning linking to the Telegraph’s “History’s greatest conspiracy theories“. An interesting list, and I hadn’t heard of all of them. I did notice one that wasn’t on the list: the conspiracy that the polio vaccine given in Africa was spiked by the United States to sterilize Muslims:
The vaccine boycott – led last year by Islamic hard-liners who believed the vaccination campaign was a plot to sterilize or kill Muslims – is blamed for spreading the crippling disease back into more than a dozen African countries where it had previously been eradicated.
Ah well, I guess they can’t add all the world’s conspiracies.
One of the conspiracies that caught my eye:
25. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami – A popular theory in the Muslim world is that the tsunami could have been caused by an Indian nuclear experiment in which Israeli and American nuclear experts participated. Several newspapers in Egypt and the Middle East alleged that India, in its heated nuclear race with Pakistan, has acquired sophisticated nuclear technology from the US and Israel, both of which “showed readiness to co-operate with India in experiments to exterminate humankind,” beginning with the heavily populated Muslim regions of southeast Asia, where the bulk of casualties took place.
Funny how Israel and the United States figure into all of their conspiracy theories. It’s not enough that Israel and the US are “the enemy”, oh no. We *far* more evil than that. We are in a conspiracy to exterminate humankind (but only after we eat babies and kick all the puppies in the world).
This image from the 7/7 London bombings caught my eye. Apparently, some people interpret this image as showing that one of the bombers was actually photoshopped into the image. Note that his arm is behind the railing (how odd), and the railing goes into his face (I think that’s just a chance alignment). Even I had to do a double-take on the image.
Looking closely, I don’t think there’s much mystery, though. The dark area which appears to be behind the railing isn’t his arm. It’s a reflection of the dark building behind him, like the other reflections in the same image (in green). A series of pictures from the same security camera could reveal more about it.
Most conspiracy theories contain a major contradiction of some sort.
For example, some governmental organization or financial cadre is competent enough to pull off a massive conspiracy, while simultaneously it makes the simplest of errors in executing said conspiracy.
So the US and Israel are powerful forces set on dominating the world, but neither can find a decent graphics designer to work Adobe Photo Shop?
Maybe there’s a conspiracy orchestrated by Abode against all the other conspiracy organizations.
Am I missing something? I only see two conspiracy theories in this post..
Go to the “History’s greatest conspiracy theories“ link.
There you’ll find all 30.